by Mike Carey
‘What would happen then?’ Rem asked. ‘They will be hardly any safer in the middle of the desert than they are here.’
‘I have some friends in Perdondaris who have similar interests to myself. I can write to them now, ask them if they will take the scrolls back to their city. I know it’s a long way,’ he said anxiously, noticing how Rem’s face fell, ‘but at least they will be in good hands, amongst those who will value them.’
With the prospect of success suddenly so near, the thought that she might really be able to save the entire library from destruction, Rem was unexpectedly engulfed by a feeling of desolation. The thought of the endless avenues of her city bereft of scrolls, the echoing emptiness that would replace the living silence she loved, hurt like a fist to the stomach. She embraced Nabeeb a little harder than she had intended, thanking him profusely for his kindness. He blushed, insisted that no thanks were necessary. ‘I’m doing this for love, like you,’ he mumbled, suddenly embarrassed.
Given that the mail service between Bessa and Perdondaris consisted of a single recalcitrant camel, the reply from Nabeeb’s friends was a long time coming. He visited the library every day, and every day he met Rem’s eyes with a slight shake of his head, disappointment in the set of his shoulders. Meanwhile, Rem continued with the long-term loans, though at Nabeeb’s insistence she made her enquiries more subtle. ‘Stealing from the sultan’s library is still a treasonable offence, Rem, whatever the circumstances,’ he reminded her. ‘You need to tread carefully.’
‘Oh, there’s no cause to worry about Al-Bokhari,’ Rem scoffed. ‘He wouldn’t notice if we harnessed the entire library to a team of elephants, drove it across the square and crashed it into the palace. His mind is on other things.’
The image made Nabeeb laugh because there was a lot of truth in it. Bokhari Al-Bokhari had never been the most observant ruler, but now all his attention was claimed by the Ascetics, and bands of street urchins could piss against the palace walls without the least fear of consequences.
Increasingly, the entire palace guard was sent out to patrol the streets, to guard Bessa’s largely abandoned pleasure district and to police the Jidur. It did no good: the Ascetics picked their fights, and large groups of guards were left to their work unchallenged through the heat of the day. But at night, when nervous watchmen patrolled alone, that was the time when a black shadow would detach itself from the lighter shadows all around, and start to follow them. The flash of a blade, a muffled cry, a dull thump – it was over in seconds, and when the next patrol came around, all that was left was the body.
The worst thing about it all was that there was nobody to be held to blame. Hakkim himself was maddeningly peaceable, only emerging from his humble lodgings to preach in the Jidur. Every other Ascetic was just a figure in a black robe, able at any moment to turn a corner, shed their disguise, and don once again the anonymity of a common citizen.
The spreading poison of their presence seemed impossible to remedy. Al-Bokhari’s counsellors had tried to bribe Hakkim, who would not even speak to accept or refuse the offer. His spies had searched for some piece of information with which to blackmail Hakkim, but none could be found. As far as the covert agents of the sultanate could ascertain, the Ascetics had no lieutenants, no headquarters, no hierarchy. Kill one, and another would take his place. They were a river of black, and a river has no angles, no weak spots, nothing to grapple with and nothing to attack. They had been mobilised by words and cunning argument, but Al-Bokhari had no such weapons at his disposal. Military force is a blunt instrument at the best of times, and in the face of the Ascetics it seemed worse than useless. So the sultan waited in indecision, orders hovering on his lips. And the city held its breath.
The day that Al-Bokhari made up his mind to act was the day Nabeeb received his reply from Perdondaris. There was a crowd in front of the library that morning when Nabeeb arrived, clutching the long-awaited letter. He was pushing through them without a glance, eager to greet Rem with the good news, when he felt a hand on his arm and saw her standing at his side, a grim expression on her face. ‘Come and see this,’ she said, pulling him along.
The crowd was not facing the library at all, but the palace on the opposite side of the square, staring at something suspended from the palace gates. As they moved closer, Nabeeb could see that it was a man. Hefam Shafiq was a vizier of unremarkable talents, known in court, if he was known at all, for his reliably dull counsel. He was a fat man of solid opinions, a sure bet for a lifelong career as a royal advisor. His life was entirely banal. His death, however, was a declaration of war.
Rem and Nabeeb stared up at the pathetic figure, his face showing wan and ghastly above the sign hung around his neck: I was the servant of corruption. Wordlessly, they looked at one another, turned and headed towards the library.
‘We have to move the scrolls tonight,’ Rem said, as soon as they were inside.
‘What, all of them?’ Nabeeb protested. ‘Surely that’s not necessary? It will be safer if we do it in stages.’
‘The time for that has passed,’ Rem shot back, ‘Al-Bokhari will begin arresting the Ascetics immediately. They’ve forced his hand, but he isn’t strong enough for a show of power, and the weakness of his retaliation will expose him. Everything is coming to a head. We must move the scrolls tonight!’
‘I’ll go and fetch my hearse,’ Nabeeb said. If he was puzzled by her certainty, he did not show it.
They spent the day wrapping scrolls in winding sheets and piling them up by the side entrance, waiting for the cover of night to move them to the hearse which Nabeeb had parked in the alleyway at the side of the library, far from the main square. Rem had barred the great wooden doors to prevent visitors, but there would be no scholars in the library today. Once the palace guard started pouring into the streets, they had emptied, most people fleeing to their homes, locking their doors and covering up their windows in preparation to wait out whatever storm was coming.
For a while the only sounds in the city were the tramp of feet and the bellow of orders as troops of guards ran past. In the afternoon, they heard the fighting begin. It intensified as evening came on, and a great roar of voices started up in the square outside. Nabeeb went out to investigate, returning with the news that the remaining Ascetics had congregated outside the palace gates.
‘Rumours are running wild out there,’ he told her. ‘They’re saying that Al-Bokhari’s guard rounded up most of the Ascetics and put them in the keep, but they’re breaking out. People are saying they’re throwing themselves against the door, again and again. Beating themselves bloody. And it’s working! The guards are falling back!’
‘Then we need to hurry,’ Rem replied.
In the surreal, hushed urgency of the falling night, Rem and Nabeeb made a series of journeys which came in time to seem like one unending journey: from the library to the waiting hearse to the library again, holding winding sheets filled with scrolls in their arms like limp bodies.
Time was a naked flame in a high wind, sometimes flaring with sudden life, sometimes sinking to a creeping shimmer. At first, Rem had found it easy to carry the scrolls. In the aeons of time and space spent running between hearse and library and hearse, they began to feel like boulders.
She and Nabeeb took it in turns to run round to the mouth of the alley and peek into the main square, to see how the situation was progressing. When Rem saw that the sultan’s standard was on fire, she knew their time was up. ‘They’ve breached the palace,’ she said, rounding the corner and helping Nabeeb load his bundle into the hearse. ‘We don’t have time to take any more, but I would appreciate it if you could do one last favour for me.’
Convincing the First and Second Librarians that their lives were in danger was fairly easy. Fear was rife in Bessa, and the sight of the hordes of black-cloaked figures swarming round the palace gates made Warid’s lips go white, and his father tremble.
‘Nabeeb here is taking some of our scrolls out of the city to Perdondaris,�
� Rem told the two men. ‘I would strongly advise that you go with him.’ She turned to Nabeeb, her voice dropping to a swift murmur. ‘If you go now, you will be able to make it before the Ascetics take the city gates. The sultan’s men have fled, so there will be no one guarding them at the moment. Hurry, and go in safety.’
Nabeeb stared at her. ‘Aren’t you coming too?’
‘I can’t. The library is not yet empty.’ He opened his mouth to speak, but she saw the intention as he formed it, and firmly shook her head. ‘No. You need to drive the hearse. They—’ jerking her head at the First and Second Librarians ‘—don’t know the way to Perdondaris. They wouldn’t even make it out of the city. You need to go.’
‘But they’ll catch you if you stay! Why won’t you come with me?’ Nabeeb’s eyes were glistening. Rem knew, with the knowledge that was her gift, what was in his mind. She could taste all the flavours her words had for him: confusion, grief, and beneath these the bitter tang of spurned affection. Nabeeb had thought throughout that Rem was a young man, and wished to flee with him to a place where they could both read and love without the fear of oppression.
‘Nabeeb,’ she said, as gently as she could, ‘I must stay with the friends I cannot save.’
He saw her resolve and nodded, began to turn away. Rem caught his hand and kissed him, just once, on the cheek. Let him make of that what he wanted; she could give him no more.
She waited until she was sure they were gone before she allowed the tears to come. When they flowed at last, they left dark tracks down her face like smudged kohl, staining her pristine uniform with dark patches. Tears of black ink. Her second dubious gift, and the reason why she never cried in public. When she was younger, Rem had sometimes imagined herself as a scroll, with all her words securely wrapped inside her. They must be very sombre words, if they only escaped when she cried.
Behind her, the library’s heavy wooden doors shuddered in their frame, rocked by the impact of some heavy object. The Ascetics were charging them with a battering ram, but they were sturdy, and would hold for the time being. Rem wiped her tears away hastily with the hem of her shirt: another distinctive thing about them was that, once dry, they would not fade. She had about an hour, she guessed, and a good third of the library was still full. She had put up a good fight, but there really was nothing more to be done. Well, there was one thing. Rem headed for the First Librarian’s office, to prepare for her last stand.
When the great doors finally shattered, and the Ascetics poured inside, the first man to step across the library’s threshold was greeted by a silver stylus in his chest. He staggered backwards, the men to either side of him starting in surprise. They were confronted by the sight of a naked woman, her body covered in curling, cursive script, the ink jet black. Some of the words they did not understand – they appeared to have been written in a language they could not decipher, though the characters belonged to their own tongue. The distances of space and time were one, and swans far off were swans to come ran snakingly up the length of the woman’s left arm, but none of the Ascetics had ever seen a swan, or even knew what it was.
‘I am a scroll,’ the woman said, her fierce eyes gleaming at them, a pointed stylus in each hand. ‘Burn me!’
Even as they overcame her, bound her hands behind her back and dragged her down the front steps; even as they carried her towards the palace, while still more of them swarmed into the library, Rem was laughing. What more could the bastards do?
Hakkim waited until the morning of the following day to pass sentence. The night had been taken up with other things. Rem was not the only one in Bessa who had angered him, and in the immediate aftermath of the coup there had been those whose sentences were in more pressing need of execution. Now he stood on the library steps, surveying the crowd gathered in the main square, and spoke with a tone of dire warning. ‘The light of the One Truth burns with a baleful fire. Where does its anger fall? It falls upon those who will not feed its flames. It falls upon those who follow lesser lights, who glut themselves on deceit!’
He held up a scroll. Rem, held behind him on the steps by two strong guards, her hands and feet bound, strained and struggled. He was standing by a pile of them, stacked on the ground in front of him. There was something wrong with them. They glistened as if wet, though there had been no rain.
‘Yes, deceit, deceit such as is contained in this scroll,’ he spat the word, ‘that I hold up before you now. This scroll of lies claims that the pleasures of the world are not to be abhorred. It holds the love of woman to be a sacred love, it cries that the lust for food and wine are healthy desires. It is a polluted thing. You see before you the woman who tried to protect this lie, and others like it. She would use it to corrupt us all. Yet she shall not succeed!’
Rem felt dizzy with his shouting and the closeness of the crowd, and something else, some foul smell in the air, sharp and metallic. Suddenly, she felt outside herself, looking out on the scene with a sickening helplessness as Hakkim flung the scroll back onto the pile at his feet.
‘She shall not succeed,’ he roared again, and now he was taking something from a fold in his robes, a dull grey box, and a piece of flint.
‘All that oppose the fire of the One Truth will be consumed by it!’ He was raising the box now, and Rem knew what he was about to do and tried to start forward, but she was too far away, and the guards were too strong, and the frenzied shouting of the crowd too loud, and it all blended into a solid wall of sound and spit and hatred as Hakkim struck the flint against the tinder box, the spark leaped, and the scrolls ignited, their oil-soaked parchment catching light immediately, irrevocably.
Rem was overcome by a wave of nausea. She vomited, again and again. The flames in front of her eyes were turning black. She was losing consciousness, the awful smell sapping her of any energy. The last thing she felt before she collapsed was the guards lifting her onto their shoulders, the cold steel of Hakkim’s voice as he pronounced her sentence. ‘She lived for this hubbub of lies. Now, she will die for it.’
A Landmark in the Desert
Issi the chief camel-driver woke from a restless sleep to find someone pressing on him. It was not unheard of: his assistants often huddled together on cold nights when the fire had died down and the only warmth was the nearest body. This, though, was altogether too much – he was being crowded on both sides. Irritable and only half-awake, he made to cuff the culprits away.
‘Get off me, you son of a donkey . . .’ he began – and realised that he had not moved. His arm was pinned to the ground. No, both arms. And his legs. A hand was laid over his mouth.
‘Don’t move. Don’t try to shout,’ said a woman’s voice.
Issi’s eyes shot open. It was still the pit of night, but he recognised the woman leaning over him as one of the concubines, the tall fierce-looking one that the legate had taken. There were other women kneeling around him, one holding his left arm, and someone else pinning down his legs.
‘We need some camels made ready,’ the tall woman said. ‘Also the litters. If I uncover your mouth, will you answer softly? There’s no need for your men to see you like this.’
She was – astonishingly – stronger than he was. Issi struggled but could not move a limb. The woman waited calmly until he nodded, then took away her hand.
‘Let me go!’ Issi demanded in a furious whisper. He had seen that En-Sadim was a man of effete appetites, unlike most of the new sultan’s followers – but what sort of perversion required a litter, and forcible restraint by women? ‘What can the legate want with me? I’m an honest working man.’
‘The legate is dead,’ the tall woman said. ‘I killed him, and all his soldiers. It may be that I don’t have to kill you. Will you help us, or must I think again?’
Something cold was pressed against his throat. This was clearly a madwoman. Issi fought to hide his terror. ‘I’ll help you,’ he croaked.
‘Good,’ the woman said. In the darkness he could not read her expression, but she took
the knife away from his neck and gestured to the others to help him stand. Issi’s legs gave way beneath him, and his attacker and another woman half-carried him to the makeshift enclosure where the camels were penned.
Another group of women was waiting there, and to his inexpressible relief Issi recognised one: Lady Gursoon, a senior concubine whom he had sometimes met at the stables. She had always treated him civilly, and had once brought him water with her own hands. A woman like her could surely be trusted to keep her head. He broke away from his two guards and ran to her. They did not follow him, but still he kept his voice low, not wanting to antagonise the madwoman.
‘Lady, you must go and wake the legate at once! That lady there—’ he gestured with his eyes, afraid to move his head ‘—is sun-struck. She’s seeing visions of murder, and she has a knife.’
Lady Gursoon did not move. He tried again: ‘Lady, we must get help now!’ But he saw with disbelief that she was shaking her head.
‘Zuleika told you the truth,’ the old lady said. ‘She did kill the legate, and we helped her to kill the others. It was to save our own lives. But you and your men are safe.’ She moved away from Issi, settled herself heavily onto one of the rocks that bordered the enclosure and patted the place beside her. ‘Here. Sit down, and I’ll tell you what happened.’
They had to use seven camels, and all the litters that Issi kept for travellers laid low by the sun. He helped the women to load the dead men four or five to a litter, trying not to look at the gaping wounds and the staring eyes. Then he and six of the women – they would not let him wake any of his own assistants – led the camels out toward the eastern dunes, while other women walked alongside the litters to make sure their runners did not catch on rocks, and to prevent their grisly burdens from slipping off. There was no light but the stars, and their progress was slow. When they reached the dunes they scraped a shallow trench in the ground and laid the men in it, side by side, covering them with sand. Issi knew they would be uncovered again in a day or so, to be stripped by the birds and jackals, but by then the women and their children would be long gone.